Church of the East

The Church of the East was an Eastern Christian denomination which existed from 35 AD to 1552, headquartered at Seleucia-Ctesiphon (now Baghdad, Iraq). The church was founded by the Twelve Apostles, with Thomas, Bartholomew, and Jude serving as its first three primates. In 424 AD, it split from the main Christian Church due to its doctrine that Jesus had distinct, separate divine and human natures, which competed with the Church's doctrine; its religious views became known as Nestorianism after their founder, Nestorius. The Church ignored the 431 Council of Chalcedon and the other ecumenical councils from then on, and it expanded greatly after the 6th century, establishing communities in India, among the Mongols in Central Asia, and in China. From the 9th to 14th centuries, it was the world's largest Christian church in geographical extent. However, it rapidly declined during the 14th century, as the Ming dynasty overthrew the Mongols in 1368 and expelled the Christians, and many Mongols in central Asia converted to Sunni Islam. Under the Mongol conqueror Timur in the late 14th century, the Timurids eradicated the Christian presence in Central Asia and the Middle East, and the only remaining Nestorians lived in Mesopotamia and the Malabar coast of India.